Intersecting Lives

Artists Theresa Anderson and Rebecca Vaughan have only collaborated on installations in the past couple of years, but the bond they’ve created as women and artists is a powerful one, though they both approach their work in different ways and eventually end up “entangling our artworks with conversations,” as Anderson puts it. “One of the things we discovered is that we’re really both talking about similar things, but with a different set of materials and aesthetics,” she adds. “We’ll meet and talk about our work, as well as things that are going on and things we’re reading, and point each other in certain directions. Then we pass each other a piece of art, and the other will respond to it in some way. Sometimes, it’s almost as if we understand each other on a pre-verbal level.”

This give-and-take process culminates in Disco Moves (and other dumb cliches) Physical Hacking, a joint show opening tonight at Pirate: Contemporary Art with a reception from 6 to 10 p.m. The work explores the intersecting roots of their shared feminism through abstracted assemblage, but Vaughan’s piece of the show, Anderson notes, “physically hacks into systems that are cultural, social things” in an aggressive way, while her part is more about “covering and leaning and sagging onto something.”